In preparing lumber for use in making furniture, cabinets, trim molding, and the like, rough-sawn boards cut from logs often must be processed to provide smooth, parallel top and bottom surfaces and straight, parallel, or tapered sides. Typically, rough-sawn boards are dried to render them dimensionally stable and then each board is planed to obtain the desired smooth, parallel top and bottom surfaces. Each board is then processed through a jointer to obtain the finished product having parallel or tapered sides.
Boards finished in this manner are commercially available and used in making the articles referred to above. However, during the manufacture of such articles the boards may be cut and otherwise worked in such a manner that a remaining unused portion of the board has sides that do not retain their original straightness and parallelism. Oftentimes, the woodworker wishes to use the remaining unused portion of the board in an application where the sides need to be straight and parallel or tapered. In this case, the woodworker may further process the board using a jointer, if one is available. Unfortunately, many home woodworkers do not possess or have ready access to a suitable jointer, which is an expensive piece of equipment.
As a result, there is a need for a device that the woodworker can use in lieu of a jointer to provide straight, parallel or tapered sides on a length of board having irregular sides and that can be purchased at a relatively low cost affordable by the typical home craftsman.
It is an object of the invention to satisfy this need by providing a fixture which is adapted to hold a workpiece (e.g., a length of board) and which is engageable with a guide (e.g., the rip fence of a table saw) as the fixture is moved relative to a tool (e.g., the saw blade of the table saw) so as to move the workpiece past the tool in a selected orientation thereto (e.g., to cut a straight, parallel, or tapered edge on the workpiece).
It is another object of the invention to provide such a fixture that is usable in combination with a table saw, band saw, table router, and the like which the wood worker may already possess or have ready access to.
Power woodworking tools present some danger to the users thereof, particularly in those instances in which the use of a tool is at variance with the normal use. Since the utilization of a table saw as a substitute for a jointer is at variance with the normal use of such saw, apparatus constructed in accordance with the invention includes means for safeguarding the user.